Side notes are welcome of course, but my real question is very specific: Has the taste (or the formula) of standard regular name-brand Coca Cola changed at all since 1990?
I can absolutely tell the difference between Coke made with HFCS and the cane sugar variety.
Mexican glass bottles and yellow capped kosher Coke are cane sugar. As for other taste I don’t think so.
I have tried Coca-Cola in several different countries.
In some places Coke seems to have the bitterness (bite) that I like and remember from Coke when I was much younger.
Coke in the USA today tastes sweeter, like Pepsi, and I definitely prefer the Coke available in some other countries.
We have coke in returnable bottles here.
There is definitely a taste difference between the glass bottles and the plastic ones.
The glass ones are much more crisper.
For a real coke the glass bottles are the best. Southerners love them. Alas I can’t drink that much sugar. So I must do with-out. Cans and plastic are a whole other thing.
I read somewhere that the syrup is graded and different places get different grades. So fountain coke is unreliable.
I can definitely tell the difference between cane sugar and HFCS in Coke and all other soda drinks.
Cane sugar is far superior IMHO.
I always get the glass bottle Cokes when I can. They taste much, much better.
I prefer Pepsi, however I can’t think of any drink that doesn’t taste better in a glass bottle.
Coke clearly has changed it’s formula over the years, all of them must have changed at some point to use fructose instead of sucrose.
Oh yeah, drinking a *Mexican Coke is a revelation.
I had nearly stopped buying Cokes. Preferring sweet tea.
I happened to buy a single bottled Mexican Coke at Home Depot.
The first mouthful brought back a flood of memories from childhood. It’s hard to describe. Think about hearing a pop song you haven’t heard in decades.
I certainly was re-experiencing a long forgotten and loved taste from childhood.
I buy a case of Mexican Coke from Home Depot every three to four months. Drink a Coke about once a week in the summer. I only have one a couple times a month in cool weather.
*Mexican Cokes are bottled in Mexico and use real cane sugar.
I can get Real Sugar Pepsi at the grocery store in glass bottles. It doesn’t seem to be a big seller but I got the Pepsi delivery guy to keep a small section stocked with those. If I was drinking a 2 liter bottle of Pepsi everyday like I used to the cost would seem pretty high though.
Yeah, but at that rate you can skip lunch. 
I agree that fountain soda is unreliable but it’s more because of the maintenance of the fountains. The ratio between the soda water and the syrup can be different and some of them aren’t well cleaned.
This is a lot like my experience, minus the part about other countries. In my area I think it’s sweeter and less interesting. From time to time I’ve tried other, small or store brands, and some of them were even worse, and the ones that weren’t seemed to be trying to be “unique” instead of trying to be good.